The story of the mural

Wednesday

The mural should be finished in about two weeks on the side of the 90-year-old former Southern Bell building on Fern Street. (Tony Doris / The Palm Beach Post)

Muralist Tristan Eaton is back at it on Fern Street’s Alexander Lofts apartment building.

Eaton’s previous mural there, The Spirit of Communication, “was damaged” in April, as apartment owner Ram Realty Services put it in a press release Tuesday. That’s a polite way of saying 40,000 pounds of bricks under the mural gave way and crashed onto the roof of the neighboring law office.

Lawyer Bill Price, forced to move his firm to another building nearby, has been suing Ram. Price said this week that after he filed suit, Ram removed the bricks from his roof and shored up the building, as ordered by a judge, and he was able to retrieve his client files.

But the damage was done, he said. When it rains, it pours inside the building, he said. The carpet and walls are gone.

Meanwhile, though, Ram completed repairs to the apartment building and called back Eaton for a reprise, while preparing to resume leasing to new residents.

The new mural, whose outline Eaton completed this Tuesday, also will be an homage to Alexander Graham Bell and will be called The Spirit of Invention.